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He described his daily routine by saying, “When I am working on a
book or a story I write every morning as soon after first light
as possible. There is no one to disturb you and it is cool or
cold and you come to your work and warm as you write.”

Hemingway’s routine — along with hundreds of other prolific
authors, artists, and scientists mentioned in Mason Currey’s
book, Daily Rituals: How Artists Work — hints at
the most productive strategy I have found for getting things
done and making daily progress in the areas that are important
to you.

Let’s talk about the only productivity strategy you’ll ever need,
why it works, and what holds us back from using it consistently.

Just like Hemingway, who produced an remarkable volume of
high-caliber work during his career, you can make surprising
progress each day if you simply do the most important thing
first.

Why It Works

We often assume that productivity means getting more things done
each day. Wrong. Productivity is getting important things done
consistently. And no matter what you are working on, there are
only a few things that are truly important.

Being productive is about maintaing a steady, average speed on a
few things, not maximum speed on everything.

That’s why this strategy is effective. If you do the most
important thing first each day, then you’ll always get something
important done. I don’t know about you, but this is a big deal
for me. There are many days when I waste hours crossing off the
4th, 5th, or 6th most important tasks on my to-do list and never
get around to doing the most important thing.

As you’ll see below, there is no reason you have to apply this
strategy in the morning, but I think starting your day with the
most important task does offer some additional benefits over
other times.

Second, in my experience, the deeper I get into the day, the more
likely it is that unexpected tasks will creep into my schedule
and the less likely it is that I’ll spend my time as I had
planned. Doing the most important thing first each day helps
avoid that.

Finally, the human mind seems to dislike unfinished projects.
They create an unresolved tension and internal stress. When we
start something, we want to finish it. You are more likely to
finish a task after starting it, so start the important tasks as
soon as possible. (Just another reason why getting started is more important than
succeeding.)

Most people spend most of their time responding to someone else’s
agenda than their own.

I think this is partially a result of how we are raised by
society. In school, we are given assignments and told when to
take our tests. At work, we are assigned due dates and given
expectations from our superiors. At home, we have tasks or chores
to perform to care for our kids and our partners. After a few
decades of this, it can become very easy to spend your day
reacting to the stimuli that surround you. We learn to take
action as a reaction to the expectations, orders, or needs of
someone else.

So naturally, when it comes time to start our day, it doesn’t
seem strange to open our email inbox, check our phone, and look
for our latest marching orders.

I think this is a mistake. The tasks assigned to us by others
might seem urgent, but what is urgent is seldom important. The
important tasks in our lives are the ones that move our hopes,
our dreams, our creations, and our businesses forward.

Does that mean that we should ignore our responsibilities as
parents or employees or citizens? Of course not. But we all need
a time and space in our days to respond to our own agenda, not
someone else’s.

Not a Morning Person?

Does the word morning make you mourn? Does the morning sun remind
you of the The Eye of Sauron? Can you think of nothing worse than
rays of golden sunshine streaming softly onto your pillow?

No worries, night owls.

As I scanned the daily habits of hundreds of authors, artists,
and musicians in Daily Rituals, I noticed an important
trend: There was no trend.

There is no one way to be successful. There are just as many
night owls producing fabulous work as there are early birds. But
no matter what their particular routine looked like, every
productive artist embraced the idea of protecting a sacred time
each day when they could work on their own agenda.

I find morning to work best. Your mileage may vary.

The phrase “Do the most important thing first each day” is just a
simple way of saying, “Give yourself a time and space to work on
what is important to you each day.”